


Conception

by AsterRoc



Series: Multi-fandom Unreliable Narrators [2]
Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: F/M, Fluff and Angst, POV Second Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-26
Updated: 2013-08-26
Packaged: 2017-12-24 17:16:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,492
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/942505
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AsterRoc/pseuds/AsterRoc
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You are trapped in Limbo, but with no one but him here beside you, you are home.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Conception

You stand on the beach holding his hand. The water laps against your bare toes, and as it sucks back out to the sea you can feel the grains of sand running between them. He smiles down at you, gives your hand a squeeze, and there is nothing else in the world but him and you. Everything is so perfect; you never want it to change. 

It feels just like when you first met. He had so many grand ideas for things he wanted to try. You remember the screams of the children around you, distracting you both from your experiments into the dream world, and for a moment they are there. They dig in the sand placidly at first, but then Phillipa looks up at you and screams for joy and runs towards you, the smaller James following. You flinch a little at their approach, and he steps in front of you and gathers them both into a hug, protecting you. 

You turn away from them and walk towards your houses. You are sure that with your mind turned elsewhere, denying their existence, the children will fade away. 

You walk along the colonnade outside your apartment-house, and he comes alongside you and slips his hand into yours. He gives you a gentle reassuring squeeze, and you turn to smile up into his blue-green eyes. You stroll together through the city you have created and towards your houses. The water laps gently around each of them. Your first apartment together: a stately building with white stone columns. The second one: a smaller, cozier building. And of course the house you bought together, after you became…

You turn away from that house, and from him at the same time, and hurry on to your new building. The lobby of the office building is lined in glass, a clean and elegant channel of water sweeps under the walkway leading to the elevator, which you ride up to your actual home. The doors open to your front hallway, lined with photographs and paintings, and you pull away from him and run to the bedroom, where you collapse in sobs. He rubs his hand over your back, repeatedly murmuring that you will find your way home soon. He does not understand why you cry even harder at his words. 

Later, you make love to him, slowly, leisurely, no worries about any interruptions from the children. No worries about the babysitter calling. No wondering whether your parents can take them next time so you can save a few dollars to spend on the chemist for your dream experiments. You cry again afterwards, and he asks what he can do to help you. Nothing you tell him. You are perfectly happy here. 

You cook dinner together not because you are hungry, but because you enjoy the time in each other’s company. You sing a little ditty while chopping the string beans, a little French song from the ’60s which makes you remember a night in your childhood when you couldn’t sleep and crept down the stairs and saw your father dancing with your mother in the dining room. For a moment their forms ghost through your own living room at your memory, and he looks up at them startled, then breaks into a grin, bows to you, and holds his hand out to you. You take it with an answering grin and place the fingertips of your other hand gently on his shoulder. As you dance together you both hear the music surround you. When the song ends he clutches you tight to his chest and whispers in your ear that you will soon go home. You tell him you are home. 

You sleep together after dinner not because you need sleep, but because you enjoy waking with his warm body next to yours, and you make love again with the morning sunlight streaming in the east-facing window. You do not bother with a condom, nor with birth control pills, because no children will come of any further unions of yours. You have already created and left two children, that is enough. Children are unnecessary here. 

You ride bicycles together to the top of a hill. You both strain as hard as you can, and you get there at exactly the same moment, just as things should be. You fall off them laughing together, and collapse into each other’s arms on a picnic blanket waiting there for you. After wine and cheese make you the perfect level of tipsy, he makes a dog and plays catch with it while you lie back in the warm sunlight and make pictures in the clouds. 

You walk back down the hill, creating new buildings as you go. Art deco next to Victorian. Small convenience stores and no mega marts. A string of white picket fences, each with a half of a dog and a third of a cat, and he laughs a childish laugh to see them hobbling along, until you decide to merge them so that every other house has a full dog, and every third house has a full cat. You each pick an area and create separate urban downtowns and then compare them afterwards. His reflects pre-war architecture laden with concrete, replicating something you think you have seen before. Yours has fanciful spires of glass, as though created with magic by elves. 

You pass your row of houses on the way back to your real house. At the end is the house you grew up in, and as you walk past it you feel a heavy metal lump in your pocket, which you choose to ignore. You swallow hard though, and he turns and holds you tight. You turn to look up at him, and put a finger across his lips before he can tell you what you know he’s going to say. He turns his head away from your finger, and you hear the laugher of children from around the corner he faces. You shiver slightly. But don’t you miss them, he asks. I have you, you reply, and you have me. Why do you need more? 

He has always been one to create, to explore, to try new things. You remember the experiment that started this, the drug to share minds, the sedation, the dream within a dream, the falling, the chaos, and the emptiness and loneliness for years while you searched for him, ever calling his name. Then you found him, and you’ve been together again since. You have developed your little routines together, even while you continually seek out new things to do together. The weight grows ever heavier in your pocket. He never stops promising you he’ll find a way home. He never stops talking about the children. It is enough for you that you are never apart. 

Until the day you are. You tell him today’s game is to make seacoast towns, which of course needs a lot of seacoast. You don’t want to influence each other, so you must walk to opposite sides of your world. He tells you he will miss you. You know he will. He walks one way, you walk the other. Then you walk back. The weight is heavy in your pocket, and you finally reach in to feel it. The metal is warm from being so close to your skin. 

You reach your first house. It is three windows wide and two windows tall. The railing separating the main walkway from the one leading to it melts into mist as you approach. The front door could do so as well, but you choose to put your hand on the doorknob and the key is in your other hand and you unlock it. You wipe your shoes on the doormat as you enter, and go straight to the stairs leading up. At the end of the hall on the right is your bedroom, and the dollhouse is right where you remember. You open the front of the dollhouse and inside is now a gray metal safe. You know the combination and it opens at your touch. The metal is warm in your hand as you bring it up out of your pocket and place it inside. 

He is enough for you. There is no need to keep searching for a way home, to keep wondering how the children are. He is your home. 

You close the door and spin the lock. You close the front of the dollhouse and descend the stairs. You close and lock the door behind you. 

You return to your seacoast and build a haven for pirates. When he shows you his, he has built a carnival for children. You laugh at his whimsy, for while you two could be pirates if you wanted, there are no children here. 

There’s only the two of you, you and him, and he is everything. 

In the distance, you hear the horn of a train sound.

**Author's Note:**

> I just rewatched Inception tonight, and found myself wondering what was going on in Mal's head while she was in Limbo with Dom. Not really sure where the second person narrative came from, I just wanted it to be really intimate and deep within her head.


End file.
